The Upstairs Room

Memoir by a young Jewish girl of being hidden from the Nazis during World War II. The more I read the more I appreciated this story, and felt it should be required reading by adolescents. Nothing graphic, but violence is mentioned in passing, such as knowing that relatives getting on the trains to work camps will never come back.

I feel kind of bad for not giving this book a higher rating, but this story just did not resonate to me. Yes, I know the author was just a child, and she wrote about this three decades after it happened, but there was something about the narrative/writing style that just... didn't work for me.

There's also a lot of detail missing, so even though the narrator and her sister spent over two years in the titular Upstairs Room, it was hard to get a feel of the place, I would have liked some more detail on their life, if they ever observed Hanukah and other Jewish holidays in hiding, etc.

this book gave me such a view into what it must have been like to go into hiding and be seperated from family. It was an eye opener for me as to how stir cazy a person could go by being shut in one small room for years... Like prison. Also how heroic people were to be willing to die to hide those who needed to hide. Truly a human view.

Think Diary of Anne Frank, but written after the fact, when the Annie of this story was an adult. For this reason, I think, the writing isn't as compelling (and, of course, her story isn't as tragic), although the story is still so important, and this one may be more readable for young kids.

From the first time I read the book (and I’ve read it many times), I bonded closely with Annie, the first person narrator. The story begins in 1938 when the protagonist Annie de Leeuw (Johanna’s name as a child) is six years old and just beginning to hear about the problems that Hitler is bringing to her world.

Four years later, in late summer 1942, Annie and her older sister Sini go into hiding with a non-Jewish Dutch family, the Oostervelds. Annie and Sini are cared for by Dientje, Opoe, and particularly by Johan Oosterveld, who is a loving man of strong character. Their father and oldest sister Rachel hide elsewhere during the war. Their mother died in the hospital of kidney disease just after they went into hiding.

The girls live show more in an upstairs room (hence, the title), but they have to crawl into the back of a closet when anyone else comes near the house. Imagine what happens when the Nazis decide to make the house their headquarters . . . .

This book is for 5th to 8th graders, but a good reader that is mature could read it when a little younger. And you can’t be too old for this book. show less

Good children's book about a Jewish family living in Holland during WWII. Because they didn't leave Europe early enough to reach the United States, they now need to find hiding spaces to keep safe from the nazis.

Annie and Sini are offered space in the home of the Oostervelds, on their farm. For 2 years they cannot go out and live normally but they are fortunate that the family is kind, hard-working and willing to put themselves in danger on their behalf.

We learn how the sisters feel about having to hide, not going out, or to school, and missing their father and sister.

Finally the war is over and their sister Rachel arrives to take them home. Eventually each sister leaves home to move on with their lives.

Sad and sweet.

Quick read about a young Jewish girl hiding from the Nazis in Holland during World War II. Although this was a Newbery award winner in 1973, I felt that the dialogue was a bit boring and redundant, but that may be due, in part, to comparing it with more recent books with similar plots that I enjoyed much more. It's still a good book to start with in teaching children about the Holocaust.